- The best photo for TourReady is wide, eye-level, landscape, and well-lit.
- Phone photos work. You don't need a DSLR.
- Empty the space. Shoot before open or after close.
- Stand at the doorway. Show depth — front, middle, back.
- If the first pass is off, we redo it free.
Table of contents
The single biggest question we get is: what is the best photo for TourReady? The answer is shorter than people expect. One landscape photo, taken at eye level from the doorway, with ambient indoor light, of an empty room. That's the recipe. The rest of this post is the why behind each variable and how to fix the photo if you're not getting a clean tour back.
One photo is enough. That is not marketing — that is the entire pipeline. You don't need a Matterport, a tripod, or a $4,000 photographer. You need a phone, an empty room, and the right angle.
One photo is enough
The category of 3D capture used to require dozens or hundreds of photos stitched together. The 3D Gaussian splat technology TourReady runs on has changed the input requirement. One properly composed photo gives the model enough information to infer the rest of the space. Submit more and you don't get a better tour — you get a slower turnaround.
So the quality of the single photo is doing all the work. The best photo for TourReady isn't about pixel count. It's about composition, lighting, and timing — three things any phone can deliver if you set them up right. Start your tour →
The angle that wins
Stand at the doorway. Hold the phone at eye level — roughly 5 to 5.5 feet off the floor. Point it parallel to the floor, not tilted up or down. Shoot.
- From the doorway: the model sees the whole room from the angle a real customer would.
- Eye level: tilted-down shots flatten the room. Tilted-up shots produce ceiling-heavy tours.
- Parallel to the floor: straight lines stay straight. The walkable result feels natural.
The single most common mistake is shooting from a corner with the phone tilted up. The tour comes back warped because the model is fighting two perspective problems at once.
Lighting in plain terms
Lighting is the single biggest variable. Get it right and the tour pops. Get it wrong and the tour looks flat. Rules of thumb:
- Turn on every light in the space. Including the ones you usually leave off.
- No harsh window glare. Shoot away from windows or on overcast days.
- Avoid mixed color temperature. If half the room is warm-tungsten and half is cool-daylight, the tour reads weird. Match the bulbs.
- No flash. Phone flash flattens the depth your tour needs.
"The best photo for TourReady is the one you would put on your homepage — taken at eye level from the door."
Framing and depth
The tour generator infers walkable depth from visual information in three planes: foreground, middle, background. Your photo should show all three.
- Phone in portrait
- Tilted up at the ceiling
- One wall, no depth
- Backlit by a window
- Phone in landscape
- Held parallel to the floor
- Front + middle + back visible
- Even ambient interior light
Landscape is non-negotiable. Portrait crops cut off the lateral information the model uses to feel out the room. If you only remember one thing from this post: turn the phone sideways.
When to shoot
Empty the space. People in the photo turn into ghosts in the tour. Movement in the photo turns into blur in the tour. Shoot before opening, after closing, or during a deliberate quiet hour.
- Best: 30 minutes before opening with all lights on.
- Good: immediately after closing.
- Avoid: mid-shift, mid-service, mid-rush.
Pre-shoot checklist
Run this list in 60 seconds before you snap.
- Every light on.
- Window shades down if it's sunny.
- Floor clear. No bags, cords, or boxes.
- Counters clean. Receipts and mugs off.
- Phone in landscape.
- Standing at the doorway, eye level.
- No people in frame.
- Tap to focus on the middle of the room.
- Take three shots, send the best one.
The best photo for TourReady isn't a perfect photo. It's a clean photo that gives the model the information it needs. The checklist above gets you 90% of the way there in 60 seconds. Start your tour →
If you need a redo
Sometimes the first pass isn't right. That's expected — and it's free. We send specific feedback on what to adjust: usually one variable, almost never all of them. Resubmit and the second pass typically lands. The redo is part of the $99.
What we won't do is take your money and walk away with a half-result. Show, don't list. The tour is the receipt — and if the receipt isn't clean, we fix it.